


The Wounded Surgeon

by Prochytes



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 12:44:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The doctor is in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wounded Surgeon

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D_ 1x22 “The Beginning of the End”. Originally posted on LJ in 2014.

The moment of gnosis arrives, on this occasion, just in time to interrupt elevenses. He spills his tea, ruining the texture of a macaroon. This is irksome. The good bakery further down Bleecker Street will not deliver. It would hardly do to visit in his work clothes. He looks at the coconut mush, and purses his lips. But a new story is kicking the rounded belly of the now. That demands immediate attention.

He sets down the cup, beside a copy of today’s _New York Times_ , secured against draughts by the fourth Infinity Stone. He rises, in a rustle of fabrics, and settles himself again beneath the Anomaly Rue. There is an aftertaste of snake-venom to this story, a hint of hydra. Rather a meagre story, that one. The Greeks used to sell it in a twelve-pack to bulk it out. Even of old, though, it was tenacious. Vanquished, it would not sink back into the Lerna swamps. Who, then, burns in Nessus’s shirt today?

He allows his thoughts to wander (as people say, indulging the fantasy that thinking straight is the natural state of man). The Eye opens. Through the soft gathered weft of the world it jabs the golden needle of its gaze. It sees.

The Playground. Some people try to kill metaphors, thus, by leaving them out in the cold to die. This never works. He enters, pushing idly at a swing as he passes by. He seeks his patient.

Adam Qadmon in a rumpled suit, whose graffiti are the Writing on the Wall. _Mene. Mene. Teqel. Upharsin._ Earth will be weighed in the balance, and found wanting.

But not today. The visitor leaves him to his wall, and passes on.

Fortitude, with her fingers at the lion’s nape. The hand is scarred by the nicks of time. Those are her damnation, and her domain. 

But time relents for her today. The visitor passes on.

The Star Child, of no woman born. Come to undo the bloody and the bold. What woods shall march for you, my child? 

But not today. The visitor passes on.

He finds the room with the pale woman sitting beside the pale man in the bed. His patient. He swabs the opening, with a once upon a time.

Human genius. Because it is human, it knows loss. Because it is genius, the loss is not accepted. A hundred hundred stories begin from that. This bed could birth a man of iron, or a lizard-king. ( _Once upon a time, there was a brilliant surgeon, who lost his hands…_ But that one’s taken.)

He bends over the bed, and prepares to make the first incision. 

FINIS

**Author's Note:**

> The quotation is from _Daniel_ 5.25.


End file.
